dancing with morning light

lessons in living artfully

this a.m., i sat down to write. but the morning light had other plans for me. so i pulled out paint and captured the light as it danced across the canvas. unbeknownst to me, the words would eventually emerge.

i then started thinking about deconstructing it, along with trees. oh, how i love the trees.

i am in awe of how they root down into the darkness of the earth before they can ascend upward toward the light. it feels like a metaphor, a reminder. maybe even a teacher.

isn’t this being human thing simply the accumulation of all of the conditioning, the weight that sometimes accompanies a life fully lived and examined? all the learning, the outstretching ourselves, and the constant growing…that is, if we are determined to evolve.

and then one day, you arrive at a place in your life where you start to realize it’s time to let large parts of yourself shrivel away, like the trees in late summer, when the leaves begin to turn, preparing for autumn, when the abscission process occurs.

surely it’s because i’m on the precipice of turning 50. however, i have come to realize that no matter what stage of life one is in, if we pay attention, we will encounter several moments across the entirety of our life where we recognize the facets of self that no longer fit.

we spend so much of our lives in dormancy, growing roots, surviving winters, and waiting in the bud. but then comes our anthesis: that brief, breathtaking window where we completely unfold, show our true colors, and become exactly who we were meant to be.

needless to say, the words finally emerged.

hugs.

xx alana

© Alana Foy 2026